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Corlindale
}} |} As Corlindale walked towards the overgrown walls, his heart was filled up with equal portions of excitement and fear. His first battle! This was what he had been training for, during the long and hard years of being locked in the Amurite citadels, forced to study moldy old tomes and practice vocalization for unbearably long stretches at a time, listening to the Elder mages droning on and on about ancient runestones and vagaries of magic while secretly wishing them to oblivion. His fellow mages marched beside him, all in a strictly ordered formation, all with equally expressionless faces. He realized that he must look a fool in all his excitement, and made a partly-succesful attempt at emulating their indifferent expressions. Moments later: chaos. Everyone was gone, the ordered formations falling into disarray as the Ljosalfar sentries that had been hiding in the treetops unleashed a hail of arrows at the unprotected mages. He had managed to evade it by quickly evoking a protective spell, in a more instinctual than rational reaction. Then he had started to run. Now he was all alone, in the streets of an enemy city. Thankfully, most of the enemy forces seemed to be concentrated at the outer walls, but he still felt very exposed as he walked around the empty streets, marveling at the mighty oak trees. He almost felt as if he were walking in a dream, so eerie was the beauty around him, and so distant the sounds of the battlefield. He found it hard to recall what the cause for the present conflict had been--perhaps a dispute over borders? Perhaps the elves had been overly protective of a source of mana? It all seemed so distant and insignificant now. Suddenly he stumbled upon an elvish patrol, coming towards him from a side-street. As one of them saw him, he called out in the melodic elven language. The vigilant sentry and the other soldiers started approaching Corlindale, though somewhat warily. They had probably been warned about the skill of Amurite mages. It did not do them much good, however. He held out his palm, and drew heat from the surrounding air to create an enormous fireball, glad of the recent rainfall that would minimize the risk of a forest fire. He flung the fiery ball at the patrol, and closed his eyes at the searing explosion of light and heat which ensued. 'Naught but ashes remained of the leading elves, while the ones who had evaded the blast threw their weapons and fled. The cowards. Feeling strangely exhilarated, he walked on. His first victory--as is so often the case with the young upstarts in military life--had made him feel all but invincible, and he almost wished more elves would come. Moments later, a wish fulfilled. He heard the rustles of leaves behind him, and immediately invoked another ball of fire. Remembering the rain of arrows with dread, he elected not to take any chances, and in one whirling motion he turned around and flung the ball in the general direction of the sound. Time stopped. Before him stood a female elf, her hair long and silvery, her eyes almond shaped and beautiful, but her face marred by the expression of pure terror on her face. Worse still, at her feet stood two younger children, a boy and a girl, clinging to their mothers dress, the older girl mirroring her mother's expression of terror, the young boy just seeming curious about the fiery object travelling towards him at a rapid pace. Corlindale had time to take all this in, in a moment which seemed to linger for centuries. He reached out his hand, and desperately and fervently willed the ball to stop, to cease its flight towards destruction, even to turn around and consume him. Anything but this. At last, as it became evident that nothing could be done, that no force in this world could reverse his magic, he closed his eyes, and his howl of misery almost served to drown the shrieks of pain. One evening in the late autumn, a stranger approached the city of Cahir Abbey, in the lands of the Elohim. He was clad in a brown cloak, with no symbols or markings of any kind, and seemed very fatigued, so the sentries on the wall took him in, and gave him food and shelter. Some were curious about his origin, but one look at his eyes was enough to convince them that not all stories were fit for human ears. This was a broken man, in spirit more so than in body, and their hearts ached with pity for his cruel fate. category:Arcane Units category:Hero Units Category:Living Units